My life in London (and its environs). "Delusional if rather sweet" – Samira Ahmed

Scribblenauts on the Nintendo DS

Hello!

All quiet from me for a bit. That’s because the weekend was largely taken up by Morgan’s birthday and the opening night of our new dancing explosion, Come Out 2Nite. You can read all about it here.

Other than that, I’ve been busying myself being too scared to go into bike shops, taking pictures of shut-down pubs (more on this later), and playing old computer games. Mainly these has involved recreating the glory days of Sensible World Of Soccer (still the best football-related game, no matter what the FIFA/Pro Ev people say), and smashing windows and being attacked by fucking bees in Paperboy. Games, eh? They don’t make them like they used to, I thought. New games may look pretty flash and fancy, but where’s the playability? Where’s the addiction? Where’s the genius?

Then I played Scribblenauts, and was forced to eat my thoughts. It’s a DS puzzle game with the cleverest gimmick ever – you can type in any item to help solve the puzzle, and it appears out of thin air. Any item. Well, almost any item. And you’re rewarded for using items you haven’t used before, or for coming up with ‘creative’ solutions.

So, for example, one puzzle was a boy who needed to be refreshed. Glass of water, maybe? That would have worked – the beauty is, there are many solutions to each problem. So I got a water baloon and threw it in his face. WIN!

Then there were some bottles I had to knock off a platform. First I tried conjuring up a helicopter, assuming that the whirring rotors would cause a mighty wind that would blow the bottles off their perch. Instead I accidentally crashed the helicopter into the judge, killing him instantly. For my next attempt, I threw a llama at it. Smash. VICTORY. Sweet nonsensical victory.

The latest level I’ve just played featured a hippy’s picnic being attacted by some ants. Because he’s a hippy, you can’t use violence. First up, I attempted the Israel solution and tried to build a fuck-off wall around the picnic. Fail. The Ants kept on coming.

Next, I conjured up a queen ant, hoping the other ants would follow the queen away from the picnic. But the queen ant was hungry too. Further fail.

Finally, I got a picnic basket and put the picnic away. You’d think the hippy would have been able to do that on his own, but no. Too busy smoking weed and looking at the clouds.